Customise Thunderbird startup - manual loading local folders??
Hi guys
I'll explain my situation first. To avoid our business of having to go down the route of a server/active directory. We have been using TB local folders for shared email storage located on a NAS. This kinda works in a way between multiple PCs (i know its not great for permissions, but works). We have google IMAP accounts for emails. Therefore its all free :) its hard enough to convince the boss to buy something. yet alone a server.
Anyway my Question:
The problems we are facing is the fact it takes TB ages to startup... with it reaching 500mb in memory usage... im guessing its going through the entire local folders which after 10 years of the business running, its at 103 GB worth!
Is there a way to stop TB "loading" the local folders at startup. So that we can get into TB faster and use the IMAP quicker. With a option of having the local folders manually or automatic load after TB is open or time delay it.
Also having another local folder directory would allow us to put old emails from years ago in there and not loading it, unless required.
I have no understanding of the working of TB. But willing to create my own addon if i could. Just need advice...
Ive attached a pic, trying to explain the idea of a addon/feature i was thinking of. plus a pic = 1000 words, so easier to explain. :)
any help will be apprenticed. Solway
All Replies (8)
A server is probably the best option, but depending on the number of users a re-purposed desktop might meet your needs.
The local folders on a NAS is disaster waiting to happen. Thunderbird knows nothing of file locking or contention. So the time will come when significant data loss will occur from that use case.
A re-purposed desktop with a copy of an open source mail server software such as dovecote would be a far better approach. You could then maintain an IMAP mail server in-house to store all the archived mails. There is no reason for this mail server to be actually connected to the internet. But by being configured on each users machine would make any mail available to all. This could also be configured to not download more than headers to the local machines so users hard drives are not filled. Synchronization could be managed, the huge and mostly useless archive is managed and through the same mechanism that moves mail from the IMAP accounts to local folders mail can be moved to the IMAP account.
The mail server could even have multiple imap accounts. For example 2014 and 2015 to make the mail into more manageable chunks.
Please also be aware that there will be in all cases a local index that could be very large. If you open a profile and look at the global-message-db.sqlite you will know what I mean. It may well be that this index is a part of your slow startup, do you use the global search feature (Ctrl+K) if not disabling the index may be an option.
Matt said
A server is probably the best option, but depending on the number of users a re-purposed desktop might meet your needs. The local folders on a NAS is disaster waiting to happen. Thunderbird knows nothing of file locking or contention. So the time will come when significant data loss will occur from that use case. A re-purposed desktop with a copy of an open source mail server software such as dovecote would be a far better approach. You could then maintain an IMAP mail server in-house to store all the archived mails. There is no reason for this mail server to be actually connected to the internet. But by being configured on each users machine would make any mail available to all. This could also be configured to not download more than headers to the local machines so users hard drives are not filled. Synchronization could be managed, the huge and mostly useless archive is managed and through the same mechanism that moves mail from the IMAP accounts to local folders mail can be moved to the IMAP account. The mail server could even have multiple imap accounts. For example 2014 and 2015 to make the mail into more manageable chunks. Please also be aware that there will be in all cases a local index that could be very large. If you open a profile and look at the global-message-db.sqlite you will know what I mean. It may well be that this index is a part of your slow startup, do you use the global search feature (Ctrl+K) if not disabling the index may be an option.
Thanks for a reply
yes was thinking a IMAP server approach... we have 7 users of this "shared archive" each one needs to be able to access and add/remove emails etc from the storage. Reason i have it on NAS is because this its redundant array. I do have some old desktops around.
Is there any more open source IMAP servers? Can i still use the NAS as a storage for local IMAP server?
One that keeps getting mentioned around here is http://www.sogo.nu/ more for their Thunderbird add-ons. But for 7 users with mobile phones it might well be worth a look. Only runs under Linux though, but that is the case with most mail servers. Certainly removes licensing issues..
Wikipedia actually do a fairly good job on possible products here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mail_servers
Look to the license column for open source
What storage you can use will depend entirely on the software. Given most are written with production servers in mind they would support unc paths and clusters so a NAS should not be a problem I would not have thought. You might find that the software will actually run on the NAS. Most of them have a Linux operating system.
You could also place an array in your desktop. Even go so far as include a drive enclosure such as this Note I googled that to illustrate not recommend.
just started up a old xp machine to test. noisey P4 beast lol
i installed hmailserver on it. seems good enough. although im concerned on security. need to dig deeper on settings. just want LAN only. just chucking junkmail in there to test between users. and only downloading headers.
Since this machine is old. don't really want this having the storage/raid. kinda want to keep the files on the NAS and let hmail find it on the NAS. is that possible? or would there be problems?
also. because its a IMAP account. this will show up in the "from list" when sending mail. is there a way to disable this account from appearing in the "from" list?
The best security is to block port 25 at the router. incoming and outgoing.
Even better disallow the IP address outgoing connection as well. There is no need for it to be looking outside the premises.
Based onthis discussion I would say yes you can use NAS storage. as log as you use ip addresses in paths, not UNC , netbios or mapped drives. But the discussion if 5 years old.
Sending mail required an SMTP account. Sure the wizard will create one when you add the account. But deleting it is the answer to preventing it's use. Just to be sure change the account name, to something like "company name shared mail" The "Your Name" to the same and the reply to to the company general account or the individual user on their machine. With that even if some one managed to send mail out using the account it will not look stupid and replies will come back to the right place..
Note that is you do it the right way. Mail will be in the account with the To set as it originally was. You can set up an identity in the IMAP account for that To: account and Thunderbird should respect that. Failing that this add-on might do the job https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/identity-reminder/?src=search
thank you
i have been googling on all lol
im setting up a hmailserver using MySQL to test. will be asking questions on the hmailserver forum regarding thunderbird email format to imap eml formats. as i don't want to move 105gb of files for it to muck up.
yes at the moment i have blocked the server via ip filter on router firewall from accessing the outside world.
in regards to the identity selection. don't really want addons. some of the office users can barely operate a pc alone. Is there any settings to just hide the account in the selection box? or how easy is it to make a simple addon?
Once you have the server up and running and an account in Thunderbird you can drag the mails (without an anti virus and in batches of around a thousand) to folders in the imap account you have created in Thunderbird. Thunderbird will look after the synchronization.